"We have books."

Translation: Nous avons des livres.

[Svea_DE]

Because you have to use an article with French nouns, here it is "des", the plural of the indefinite singular articles (une, un).

[mukul.bhardwaj]

Why 'des livres' and not simply 'livres'

[hhzhang]

French uses articles a bit differently than in English. With some exceptions, French nouns usually have to have an article before them, even in cases where no article is used in English. So in this case, because we have multiple books that are not specified, we have to use the indefinite plural article "des". You can think of this as meaning "some" in English; "We have some books" would have the same meaning as "We have books".

In other contexts, French omits articles where English uses articles. For example, "I am a doctor" is "Je suis médecin", not "Je suis un médecin".

[karmistha1]

Can we write 'ont' instead of 'avons'

[hhzhang]

No - the present tense conjugations of "avoir" are:

J'ai

Tu as

Il/elle/on a

Nous avons

Vous avez

Ils/elles ont

There are no exceptions to these conjugations, so whenever the subject is "nous", you can only use "avons". Similarly, if the subject is "ils" or "elles", you can only use "ont".

[sambhavi]

How to make out difference between ils sont and ils ont?

[maui3]

This answer has a brief explanation (and also the difference in pronounciation)

https://forum.duolingo.com/comment/1213647/ils-ont-vs-ils-sont

[maui3]

*pronunciation

[Sagheb5]

Download the app(french verbs)to don't confuse the verbs.It was helpful for me

[Sagheb5]

I'm sorry if i said something wrong in English because i am Persian

[thomasjewer]

persian is my favourite pokemon

[deactivated user]

What's the difference between Nous avons des livres and On a des livres

[seshatdreams]

On is more informal

[Pezzeroon]

this is probably a dumb question but why is it nous avons and not nous sommes?

[hhzhang]

"Nous sommes" means "we are", rather than "we have".